(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a broadcast reception apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a broadcast reception apparatus which obtains and stores high-use-possibility reproduction programs, in advance.
(2) Description of Related Art
In digital broadcasting, to provide appropriate representation of broadcast programs, it is desirable that broadcast stations generate various formats of data (hereinafter called contents) for the broadcast programs. It is desirable, for example, that the contents are generated using any formats out of HTML, XML, DVX, and JAVA according to the story or scenario of the broadcast programs, and similarly, that the contents are compressed using any of a plurality of compression methods according to the story or scenario of the broadcast programs.
When the contents are generated as described above, broadcast reception apparatuses that receive and reproduce the contents require reproduction programs for all types of contents. This would be possible, but is not realistic since the broadcast reception apparatuses would need a large capacity of storage.
One solution to the above problem is that broadcasting apparatuses in the broadcast stations transmit the contents together with the reproduction programs used for reproducing the contents, by a time-division multiplexing method. FIG. 1 shows time-division-multiplexed data transmitted by a broadcasting apparatus. As shown in FIG. 1, a reproduction program is repeatedly transmitted between pieces of contents-part data. The reproduction program is transmitted at every period T so that the broadcast reception apparatus can start reproducing from some midpoint in the contents as it starts receiving.
Broadcast reception apparatuses receive the contents together with reproduction programs, while reproducing the received contents using the received reproduction programs.
This enables the broadcast reception apparatuses to reproduce the contents that are generated with a variety of types of formats and transmitted by broadcasting apparatuses, without storing the reproduction programs in advance.
There is a problem, however, in the above-described transmission method. That is to say, if contents-part data is received first, viewers must wait some time before viewing the contents until a reproduction program for the contents-part data is received.
Suppose that the channel is selected, for example, at time t1 as shown in FIG. 1, then it takes time period Δt before the reproduction program is completely received. Furthermore, it takes time period α before the reproduction program is activated. As a result, the contents of the program provided over the selected channel is not reproduced for a time period, Δt+α. This might cause the viewer to become suspicious or worry about the viewing. Even though it is possible to reduce the waiting time by reducing the period T and the period Δt, it also decreases the transmission rate of the contents data. Accordingly, this is not an appropriate method.